Wake the hell up
by Weezila
Summary: Daryl saw red. Why would Carol cover for a monster? He didn't care Carl was a kid, he was a heartless monster and it was time somebody told him. Rick obviously couldn't- or wouldn't- but it didn't matter, because Daryl had something to say to the heartless son of the sheriff, something Rick should've said months ago. Sometimes, the truth hurts like a bitch.


**Hello Internet. **

**Cursing Warning. **

**Like, a lot of cursing. It IS from Daryl Dixon's point of view after all. **

**Enjoy, **

**Weezila.**

**0000000000000**

Daryl saw red.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was mildly surprised how true that phrase was. He wasn't just livid, he was murderously infuriated to the point where his vision blurred, and everything seemed to run together in a vague, bloody way.

Crimson air, sun-baked wind. Everything seemed like hell, and he was a demon ready to snap someone's neck the second they crossed him.

But Carol's voice—and it was _always_ Carol's voice—whispered in the back of his mind, telling him to breathe. He voice was like cool blue water, streaking through the fiery haze on his brain and giving him that one clear shot at sanity.

_This_ was not ok.

_Nothing_ was ok.

When Carol confessed, when Rick had said…

No, he couldn't. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't function, he just _couldn't. _ Carol was sanity, she was kindness in an unkind world. She was everything that kept him firmly planted on this hell-hole of an earth.

Nothing he knew about her added up to the fact she could kill two people in cold blood. She had cried mercilessly when she bashed that ass-hole of a husband's head in, and he was already dead. Daryl had done the same with his brother, but he'd never killed someone alive so… coldly.

And Carol was a thousand times better than him. If he couldn't do it, there was no way in bloody hell she would. She was what he tried to live up to be like, she was the good and the nice and the beautiful in this ugly world, the angel to his demons.

She couldn't be darker than him. It wasn't possible.

They'd locked her up in that cell, waiting to figure out what to do with her, and he felt like he'd been locked up right along with her. And he _hated_ being locked up.

He couldn't say anything, not because he didn't want to upset people, but because he couldn't find the words. He'd gone to her, clutched the bars of their cage and practically howled in pain and rage. She couldn't, she just couldn't. He didn't care who saw, he wouldn't leave and he would cry and rant and cuss and scream until he understood. If he never did, then he'd never stop, not until he breathed his last breath.

She'd looked at him with such _sympathy. _ He pale blue eyes were teary, but with a resigned acceptance.

And just like that it clicked.

She was covering for someone.

He'd demanded to know, and she wouldn't give. He'd hissed and screamed for hours, clutching the bars of their cage and cussing out Tyresse when he tried to come and confront Carol. That man's anger paled in compare to Daryl, and he didn't need to spend more than ten feet within the enraged hunter to know that even though he'd lost someone, Daryl was losing someone too. Daryl would've understood anger, he would've understood revenge. But Daryl wasn't there right then, Daryl was lost to pain and loss and simply wasn't about to put up with Tyresse invading on his own melt down, and thankfully Tyresse had left before he'd gotten a knife to the skull.

Eventually, she let it slip. She'd said something that gave a hint she hadn't meant in her trying to explain why the hunter couldn't help her.

A child.

A mother fucking _child_ did this.

And just like that it was all ok again. Not because a child had murdered two people in cold blood when they were supposed to be the source of hope for everyone in the post apocalyptic world, but because Carol _hadn't_. She was _protecting_ that innocence, being that damned beautiful guardian angel Daryl had always known she was.

But here he was, angry again.

Not just angry, but purely enraged. He didn't even have the pain and the hurt to diminish it now, he was only angry.

_Carl._

God, he knew that kid was on a dark path the minute he heard he'd shot Shane. He knew it again, more assuredly when the boy had confessed he'd shot his own mother. He had the same look Merle did as a kid, the only difference was that Carl was too scrawny to push others around, and had the intelligence to keep quiet about his darker intentions. Merle was always to stupid for his own good, spouting off his sadistic tendencies and getting the classification as an ass-hole early on, and he only got louder.

Carl only ever got quieter. That was arguably scarier.

Daryl got quiet, Merle got loud. Daryl kept the things he shouldn't be thinking or saying to himself, kept them bottled up and buried them until the ate away at his insides. But, the things he shouldn't have been saying weren't bad things, only things Merle would've beat him up for, saying he was being too much of a prissy. Daryl still remembers the time he said he actually cared when Merle left, and his big brother had beat him within an inch of his life.

But Carl…

Carl didn't say things because they were in line with Merle, or the Governor. They weren't good things, but he still got quiet the way Daryl did, and Daryl knew intimately how horrible that was. How _terrifying_ that should be for them all.

Because Carl wouldn't be a kid forever with the sheriff's hat too big for his little head putting off the air of some child trying to be a good-guy cop like his dad. Carl was so much smarter than Daryl was at that age, and the hunter couldn't help but wonder if the kid still wore the hat simply to put others off figuring out what he was really thinking.

Someday, Carl would be an adult. Tall like his dad maybe, strong from growing up in an Apocalypse.

Too strong.

Too calloused.

Daryl knew that feeling intimately as well, even before the world ended. At least he still gave a shit. Carl was probably past the point of giving a damn even if Rick and Judith died in front of him, screaming as they went.

Damn it all. Maybe he was still following Shane's lead, even though it's been months since that bastard got his just desserts. Maybe he watched too many ruthless slaughters of Walkers too young and simply assumed it was the same with people still alive. Maybe he was too pampered in his life to think he'd ever be truly hurt by his actions. His parents, Lori especially, gave him everything and tried so hard to make it seem like the Apocalypse was just a bad rumor, to coddle him while Shane talked up how "awesome" it was to grow up and bash in Walker heads, always swinging a gun around with that bad-ass-cop-mentality to get the young boy admiring him.

Daryl knew life was shit from painful experience, and you had to be tough to get anywhere, even just to tomorrow. Carl knew that life was shit, but hadn't experienced it truly yet. He'd lost his mom, yes, lost Shane, yes, but he hadn't been beaten down within an inch of his life by fate yet. He didn't even know he'd lost everything, because he was too young to remember what everything was, back before the world ended. He'd coasted through the Apocalypse on the backs of the adults fighting for him, only hearing glimpses of the hard truths he had to know as he grew, and he'd taken then to heart.

Too well.

He wasn't acting to protect people because he cared, he was acting to protect people because that was what he'd seen people do. He'd seen people make the hard calls, but he'd never seen people as they internally struggle over the morality of it. He only saw the end result, and somewhere along the line he'd gathered that you simply weren't supposed to care, because he'd never seen it, because everyone simply swallowed their inner battles in quiet pain.

He was never around for those meetings where everyone argued on the right thing to do, the debates over right and wrong. He was always told to sit out, and he only ever saw their decisions, and how dark those decisions often were.

But then he'd gone an crossed a line, and left _Carol_ to take the fall. The little shit probably wouldn't have spoken up even if they'd decided to kill her—which they _wouldn't, _seeing as Daryl would've grabbed her and run before the thought had ever properly left their mouths.

He wanted to grab the kid and toss him over the fence to the Walkers in his rage, but Carol's voice in the back of his head was kindly talking him down, slowly but surely.

He was still pissed, but he knew what he had to do, and Rick sure as hell wasn't about to do it.

"No, Daryl!" Carol tried to stop him as he broke away from their little group. It was him, Carol, Tyresse, Glenn, Maggie, Hershel, Michonne, and a catatonic Rick as the sheriff tried to figure out what had just come to light.

Carl stood just outside their circle, trying to look stoic and his big brown eyes only just starting to betray a little nervousness at their reeling reactions. Upon realizing what had really happened, Daryl had dragged them all out here to the fenced off courtyard outside, including Carol and Carl, to set it straight. Everyone looked a little green at the horrific truth, Rick looked twice as bad as he had when he realized Lori was gone only this time completely frozen and quiet, and Carol looked on the verge of bursting into hysterics. She had tried to save the boy after all, no matter how much the kid didn't deserve to be saved.

Daryl ignored Carol's protest and grabbed Carl by the arm, dragging him backwards and across the concrete platform to the set of steps leading to a blocked off door they hadn't cleared yet. He could hear someone start to protest and move after them, but one look from Daryl stopped them cold.

He moved them across the courtyard from the others to the steps, shoving Carl up until he was eye-to-eye to the kid.

"Wha-?" Carl frowned, confused.

"I ain't talkin' down to ya and I'm not gonna kneel so you can talk down to me. We both know there ain't no such thing as kids in this world anymore, so I'm gonna talk to ya like an adult, and you're gonna stand there and listen, got it?" Daryl growled at the boy, who gulped and nodded once, frowning in a seriousness he shouldn't have had to force upon his expression. He should've known right from the start this was a sickeningly serious situation, way before he even considered murdering someone in cold blood.

"You're a cold son of a bitch, you know that?" Daryl said bluntly to him.

Carl blinked in shock. "I, uh-"

"You ain't just sick, you're one fucked up little psychopath. I should know, I grew up with a couple of those. You see that look on your daddy's face? If that ain't what disgust looks like, I don't know what is." Daryl continued brutally, shrugging in a terribly honest sort of way. "I've got a stronger stomach than most, but if Maggie don' lose her lunch in the next five minutes I'll eat my crossbow."

Carl had gone pale, blinking rapidly at the hunter. "I did what I had to do!" He blurted out, but his voice came out higher than normal. "You would've done the same thing!" He insisted.

Daryl laughed once, hard and humorlessly. "Don't go comparing me to you, kid, I ain't nearly that dark. I'm twisted, but I ain't so screwed up in the head I'd shoot my baby sister for so much as lookin' at me funny."

Carl flushed angrily. "I would _never-!"_

"Good luck tellin' that to them." Daryl said a beat lower and more intensely than before, stopping Carl dead in his tracks. His eyes narrowed at the kid as if daring him to argue it. "They don' know what to think of you anymore. No one does, not even your daddy. I know a little seein' as my brother was one twisted son of a bitch too, but that don' mean I didn' think he was a monster too. That's all they see now: a monster. They don't know what you'll do, if you'd kill them. Most of them will be wantin' you dead now too, you know that right? Karen, that girl you killed, Tyresse over there loved her. He sure as hell wants you dead, and don' think you'll be comin outta that fight on top, he's not some pinned up Walker and there ain't gonna be nobody who will help some dangerous cold-hearted bastard like you. Hell,_ I_ want you dead a bit too. Carol's one of the only things I got in this world and you almost let her die for you, you little piece of shit. She's too nice to ever wish bad on you, but I ain'. You want to be all grown up and take this on yourself, then grow up and do it. Yell at them that you killed those sorry saps, and see what they do. If they don't lock you in a cell to rot or toss you out to the Walkers it'll be because your daddy's lost it in the loony bin again from what you did, from how you let him down. If you wanna make the hard calls like you think you are, then take what comes with it. If you try and hurt someone I care about again, I don't care who still thinks you're a kid, I will personally put a bolt in your eye socket got it? And you best pray you're _man enough_ to fight me off." He snarled.

Carl shook a little bit. He was, after all, just a boy trying to be grown up, and Daryl was a hunter and a fighter than grown men sometimes doubted they could take. He was absolutely primal, like a wolf growling in hate and anger, and Carl had seen him claw out a Walker's brains with his fists and a knife before.

He gritted his teeth and tried to stand up straighter. "If you're threatening me, it makes you no different. You're trying to protect people too then." Carl demanded.

Daryl snarled at him so viciously the boy almost stumbled up the stairs in an attempt to take an instinctive step back.

"No, it _don't._ Because unlike a Walker, _you_ are a threat." Daryl hissed at him. Carl blinked in wariness at that. "I can kill a Walker without thinkin' twice about it, but even I don' think I have it in me to kill a _person. You_ on the other hand, are what the old world put on death row: for being too dangerous to live."

"You would kill someone if you had too." Carl shot back at him, sure of himself.

Daryl leaned back, reeling in his anger for a moment and giving the kid and narrowed look.

"I don' know _what_ I would do. But we now all know what _you_ would do, and it ain't pretty. I doubt myself every god damned day, but you… you're just some icy little bastard who don' give a shit, empty as a Walker if you ask me."

"Well no one did," Carl hissed at him.

Daryl scoffed, "Do you hear what I'm sayin? Do it sound like I think too highly of you? No, in fact, I pretty much already said I hate your guts, but guess what pipsqueak, I'm the _only one_ in this damned prison who's gonna give you _any_ chance. Not even your daddy is thinking straight enough to give a shit about you right now, you've fucked him up pretty bad with this shit you pulled." Somehow, this statement was worse, because it lacked his initial anger. What Daryl said now, was the rock hard truth, and it stung like the flat side of a blade.

Carl glared at the ground. "What do you want from me? An apology? I'm not sorry! I was protecting everyone else who wasn't infected. People are alive because two people who would've been walkers anyway are down."

"You mean dead. _Murdered. _Don't sugar coat it, that shit is _all_ yours, so own it." Daryl huffed at him. "And like I said before, Walkers ain't our problem. I got a thousand things wrong with this shitty life, but the dead isn't one of them. They were _locked up_, and even if they did turn it'd be like shootin' fish in a barrel. Which, no one said they'd turn. A lotta people were exposed, yourself included little man seein' as patient zero was your best friend, but you weren't even there to hear the whole story to know shit about the situation. You made a half-ass call and an even worse decision." He said simply.

Carl turned his glare to the hunter. "You've got no right to judge me, or anybody." He brushed him off.

Daryl took a step back, surprising the boy when he ran a hand through his long hair and shrugged like he couldn't deny it. "No, don't suppose I do." He agreed with surprising ease.

Carl looked highly suspicious, even alarmed at him. "What? Done with the lecture? No more on what piece of shit I am?" He demanded in frustration.

Daryl scoffed again. "This ain't a lecture kid, it's the truth. You fucked up, and you don't even see it. I was hopin' you weren't too far gone, but you know what? I'm thinkin' it's a lost cause."

"Just because no one agrees with me, I'm a lost cause? What if I'm _right?"_ Carl snapped.

"It don't matter, because _no one agrees with you._" Daryl shook his head slightly mocking right back at him. "It don't matter one lick if in the grand scheme you're _right_ or whatever, no one else is gonna back you up. You need _people_ in this world to survive, not bloodlust and knives, and you done gone and screwed everyone who ever cared about you over. You've scared them all off being the little bastard you are, and you don't even see that you're pretty much fucked for life. You're _alone_, twerp. But, you're probably just enough of a monster to even care." The hunter said coldly.

Carl looked a bit lost at his words, though he still frowned in frustration.

"That's not what I see." He said finally. "I see that I'm actually going to survive all this while everyone else waffles on what to do until it kills us all." He declared quietly.

"Maybe." Daryl agreed with a short nod, alarming Carl further.

"And you don't care?" He insisted.

Again, Daryl shrugged uncaringly. "I'd gladly die that death than die alone of old age because I left everyone I ever loved to die by their own stupidity. They may be idiots, but I like 'em anyway. I'd rather they get me killed than die of my own damn self. I couldn't make it out there alone anyway, I need them."

"That's not true." Carl frowned. "Everyone knows you could probably do _better_ without everyone tying you down."

At this, Daryl laughed once bitterly. "Yeah, right. If I was out there on my own, I'd shoot myself before a week was out. I'm tough enough to get the job done, but if you ask me to do it alone then I'm takin' the easy way out. This shit-hole ain' worth crap without people to fight through it with." He declared, and Carl looked horrified.

"Then you're as weak as the rest of them." He dismissed, but his voice wavered a bit, as if this news unsettled him deeply.

Daryl looked him dead in the eye.

"Yeah, I am." He admitted with a note of utter honesty and Carl actually dropped his jaw as if to say something, but no words came out.

"I'm _human_, kid." Daryl continued, staring down the kid without a trace of anger or aggression, only honesty. "I'm _weak_ and breakable. Just like anybody. The first time I killed a Walker, I puked my guts out. Merle had to kill them for a few days after that cuz I nearly shit myself every time one came near. He beat the hell out of me for it until it hurt worse _not_ killing a Walker than to just get it over with. Those bastards as Woodberry asked me to kill my own brother, and I almost let Merle kill me instead of go through with it. I cried every night for weeks after I had to shoot Dale in the head, and I still get nightmares about having to kill Merle as a Walker. I'm as weak as they come kid, but people like your daddy still think I'm strong because I'm weak and I do it all anyway. You ain't strong because you kill people in cold blood, you're just some pathetic fool who doesn't know it's wrong. No, you're worse than that, you're a _threat_ to us all because we don't know who you'll kill next. You ain't strong, you're a coward. A cold, heartless coward."

Carl blinked, shocked.

Daryl stood in silence, watching his with his sharp eyes for a couple long minutes.

"You surprised I can cry?" He offered.

"I…" Carl drifted off, frowned slightly.

"When's the last time you cried kid? I bet it's been months. That ain't natural. When's the last time you felt _anything?_"

He didn't even say it aggressive or accusingly, only demanding of an answer.

Carl frowned, realizing Daryl actually wanted a response and falling short.

"Huh." Daryl said, shaking his head in a sort of hopelessness. "That ain't human kid. That's cold." He said with a helpless shrug.

"I do feel things." Carl insisted, balling his fists up in frustration, but seemingly frustration at himself.

"Really?" Daryl accused with a raised eyebrow. "What did you feel when you killed two unarmed people in cold blood?" He demanded.

Carl blinked, looking at the ground in thought.

"If you have to think about it, then you obviously weren't feeling much." Daryl scoffed at him. "And if you can be that much of a cold blooded killer… then you just ain't human. You're no better than a Walker, only you don't eat 'em too. You _do_ know that right?" He said, not angrily, but calmly.

Calm enough to start to freak Carl out.

"I'm not…! I… I _am_ human!" Carl insisted, slightly desperately. Daryl could just see everything he'd said running though the kids' mind again.

"You're actions don' leave for much hope of that." Daryl shrugged dismissively. "And honestly… no one's gonna believe you at this point. And don't take me wrong, I'm _not_ on your side. No one's on your side, not even your daddy or Carol. Sure, Carol might speak up so they don't kill you, but she sure as hell don' think you're right. If they put it to a vote, I'm votin' _against_ you, just so you know, for what you did to her. I just thought you should _know_ how far up shit's creak you are, how badly you've fucked this all up before you go screaming some righteous shit at everyone, cuz God, we had enough of that with Shane. I thought that now that he's dead we'd've gotten a break from his bat-shit crazy, but apparently it's catching." He huffed, reverting back to his quiet, gruff manner.

"They'll… they'll see it eventually. What I did-!" Carl cut himself off at Daryl incredulous look.

"Don't kid yourself, kid. You're alone. Suck it up. Shouldn't be so hard for you." Daryl told him simply. "Now. I've got to go make sure everyone knows Carol isn't the monster here." He told him, turning and stalking off back to where the small group had anxiously been watching them talk out o fear shot.

"Daryl?" Carol said nervously as he rejoined them, their eyes all flickering between the hunter and the boy still on the steps. "What… what did you say to him?"

Daryl shrugged noncommittally. "The God honest truth. Hurts like a bitch though." He said in that quiet, subdued way of his. "Don't," He stopped Carol as she made to move towards the mini-killer. "Give him a couple hours." He asked, and they looked in concern/curiosity at him, exchanging confused looked with each other.

He didn't look back when they all did, he didn't see it, but he heard the moment Carl sat down on the steps and began to cry.


End file.
